Star Trek/Headscratchers: Difference between revisions

{{work}}

* ''[[Star Trek (film)/Headscratchers|Star Trek 2009]]''

 

* Before I start, I'd like to admit I'm not a huge fan of ''Star Trek'', but I am aware of the concept. However, it seems like they travel through space in a huge spaceship with at least a hundred people on it, and yet only the people on the bridge do anything, even when they go down to the planet. Now I know that there need to be people to look after a ship of that size, but surely it would be easier just to have a smaller ship with less crew who are there just to be killed off every time they run into a little bit of trouble, as it seems to be their only job is cannon fodder and I can't really think anyone in this type of Utopian society would sign up just to be cannon fodder.

** Several episodes give the crew size as 430, which really isn't very many at all (a real world aircraft carrier has a crew complement of about 5000). The commanding officers would beam down because only they had the authority to make contact with a newly discovered planet. The cannon fodder redshirts were security guards whose job was to act as bodyguards for the main characters. (Although it does seem serving as a security guard under Kirk was more hazardous than most captains in the Federation.)

** There are several episodes dedicated to the lower decks of the various ships who sit at a console waiting for something to happen. Nothing is immune to decay. Fuses, lightbulbs, plasma couplings and other things need to be maintained, probably on a daily basis. That stuff isn't very glamorous but it is necessary. Scotty merely represents the leadership of the entire engineering department that is putting the ship back together after every battle.

** They're cataloging and researching samples taken from the various planets they've visited, writing sociological papers on those planets' societies, doing tech tests, revising the star charts, and all that other stuff too.

 

== Earth Standard Time Everywhere ==

* For that matter, how do they work out duty shifts on vessels with multiple species aboard? Not all planets have a 24-hour day cycle. Is it just that all M-class (which I interpret as Earthlike) planets have similar-length days, or is some other arrangement made?

** [[Deep Space Nine]] used the Bajoran schedule. I'm guessing it's majority rule.

 

== Your Consoles A'Splode! ==

** Also, in the new movie, they have fixed this. Every time the ship is damaged, rather then seeing something on the bridge explode, we see something in engineering blow up instead, which makes a bit more sense.

*** They'd do that on TNG too any time things got Really Bad. For example in the Best of Both Worlds part I, after a few solid hits and some minor console explosions, the Enterprise takes a really bad hit and we cut down to Main Engineering to see [[Unnecessary Combat Roll|Geordi evacuating the warp core room]] amidst all sorts of busted pipes spraying steam or whatever the hell it is.

* I could be wrong, but as I recall the whole exploding consoles thing started when Saavik was taking the [[Kobiyashi Maru]] test. In universe the simulator was just the bridge so the panels were rigged to explode harmlessly in response to the 'damage' the simulated Enterprise was taking from the Klingons as a indicator of the catastrophic nature of the damage and the casualties, essentially the consoles exploded and the bridge crew 'died' as a representation of the simulated battle damage and casualties. Unfortunately this escaped from simulated starship bridges where it made sense and 'real' starships started to ape this in combat, hence [[Made of Explodium]] consoles.

 

**** Oh, and the ENT finale.

** Bread and circuses?

 

== All I Need's My Holodeck ==

**** Actually, it's physically impossible for the Borg shield implants to deflect bullets, because the momentum is transfered to the implant, which would then be moving at near-sonic speeds inside the Borg. Also, did you know they apparently have lasers on their arms? They seem to use them in one episode.

*** Er, no. The deflector shields in ST don't work that way. Energy is countered and dispersed, not transferred into the shield generators. At least not in TV canon; some EU stories may have different rules. As for the lasers, yes, they did use them in the very first Borg appearance in "Q Who?" to kill a Redshirt. But since most drones are not dedicated combat units, they rarely fight back. No, it's not efficient; but then, the Borg ''aren't'' and never have been efficient, they just like to tell themselves (and everyone in earshot) that they are.

*** An easy resolution for the above debate as to why the Borg would not be able to adapt to bullets: the fact that they haven't already done so. Think about it: what are the odds that, in all the millennia the Borg have been conquering planets, they've never encountered a species that uses bullets or some other form of projectile weapon?

*** As for why the Federation doesn't seem to be smart enough to use projectile weapons against them (aside from [[Rule of Cool|phasers being cooler than kinetic weapons]]): they've fallen victim to the problem plaguing the Asgard in their war with the Replicators over in the [[Stargate Verse]]. Namely, they've become used to searching for technological solutions to their military problems (read: technobabble) rather than innovating tactically with what they already have, and being unwilling to make strategic sacrifices ''a la'' Carter's bait-and-switch with the ''O'Neill'' in "Small Victories". Teal'c's assessment of the Tollans in "Pretense" is applicable as well: "The Tollans [Federation] have not been at war for many years. They do not think strategically." Picard's "We're explorers, not soldiers" mindset is the heart of the matter: At the beginning of TNG, Starfleet doesn't see itself as a military organization, so when forced by circumstance into that role, they do a uniformly terrible job until the mindset changes. In that respect, the Dominion War and the various conflicts with the Borg are healthy for the Federation in the long run, inasmuch as they've given them a good swift kick in the pants. The effects of that kick can be seen as early as ''[[Star Trek: Nemesis]]'' (three or four Earth years post-war), where for the first time we have an armed ground vehicle that can be used for scouting. It was probably developed as a counter to a similar Jem'Hadar vehicle during the Dominion War.

** I always comforted myself with the idea that in-universe, he was an acrofatic stout powerful scotsman warrior sumo guy.

* Same way james Doohan did, he ate more calories than he burnt off. Presumably in the gap between the series and the movies he wasn't running for his life, or in a blind panic trying to fix the engines before the latest godlike alien Kirk pissed off blew it up, so he got more sedantary and just didn't cut back. Plus he got old(er), and with age comes a slowing metabolism.

 

 

== Where Did All Those Wars Go? ==

* Also, was there nuclear war on Earth in the late 20th or early 21st Century, or not? I wish they'd make up their minds about the backstory, in all seriousness.

*** This editor suggests Eugenics Wars were actually fought in an MMORPG. Khan was actually a super-nerd, who took over a quarter of a video game "Earth". We saw in "Space Seed," Khan's first appearance, that 23rd century "Ship's Historians" were not necessarily that bright, so a mix-up in the historical records could happen. Right? Right?

**** I always figured that the Eugenics War and World War Three were the same thing but with different names. Than again, I'm not as up on [[Fanon]] as some other people, so I could be way off.

* And then there were all the wars that supposedly took place during early TNG but which we never heard of... specifically with the Tzenkethi and the Cardassians. Plus a whole bunch of wars (Talarians, anyone?) right before TNG started. Apparently the Federation is just so big that it can be at war for years with someone we've never heard of before this week's episode.

** Would you like this troper to post a list of major American military actions since World War II? It's hardly implausible that in the half century plus between the ''Star Trek VI'' and TNG that the Federation got into some scraps. And from what we've since learned about the conflict with the Cardassians, it was a series of low intensity border disputes, not a total war like the Dominion War. The situation was probably similar with the Talarians and whoever else.

 

== Join the Redshirt Army Today! ==

* I suppose we'll never know the answer to this, but... how come we've gone from spacesuits to "life support belts"; around Kirk's time... but afterwards, ''back'' to spacesuits?

** Of course, as I write this, all the many, many times their supposedly foolproof gadgets broke down for various reasons come to mind. Chances are, a few too many life support belts shorted out when a [[Negative Space Wedgie]] sneezed.

*** Yes but Roddenberry also considered TOS to be non-canon when he made TNG, but everyone still considers TOS canon. (He considered TOS apocryphal. Kirk existed, and some of the missions happened, but nothing happened the way TOS showed it.)

**** Wrong. He specifically said that where TNG and TOS conflicted, whatever TNG said was canon, but this is because of the canonical mess that was the third season. TOS is very definitely canon.

***** Another point to raise is that perhaps Sisko was indeed being a bit racist with respect to Nog -- Quark calls him out on something similar in "The Jem'Hadar." Nog earns Sisko's respect in the fullness of time, though the point remains that he does so by what could seem like an assimilationist move -- going to Starfleet Academy.

***** We're not talking about "cultural acceptance" of mixed race children. We're talking about the ''nature'' of mixed race children. In Star Trek, every child of a mixed-species union is ''inevitably'' described as "torn" between two fundamentally conflicting natures. Human/Klingon hybrids have to struggle to control their fiery Klingon tempers. Human/Vulcan hybrids struggle to reconcile the human desire to emote with the Vulcan desire to suppress emotion. They suffer ''physical and psychological stress'' trying to reconcile their mixed-species heritage. ''This does not happen in real life.'' Only in the world of Star Trek (and apparently in the mind of Gene Roddenberry) does this happen. "Moreover, Sisko wasn't saying "All Ferengi are like that," he was saying, "His behavior is acceptable in his culture."" Wrong. Sisko's exact words were: "Sounds like he's acting like a Ferengi to me. You can't blame him for that." I defy you to explain to me how that is not racist.

****** Keep in mind that different species in Star Trek are not a perfect allegory for different races among humans. Among human races, there is no biological hardwiring that makes races act certain ways; behavior is all taught through culture. A black child raised by white parents will not have a tendency to "act black" because there is no such thing as "acting black". But in Star Trek, the vulcans and klingons and ferengi are not different races, they are different SPECIES. They evolved completely independently of humans and as such their brains probably don't function exactly the same. So to say someone is "acting klingon" may actually be a legitimate statement, even if it is wrong to say someone in the real world is "acting Asian". And this means that a human-klingon hybrid having to tone back her fiery temper may be legitimate too, because who knows what psychological, emotional, and hormonal effects klingon biochemistry would impart on a hybrid child.

****** What about Worf's son Alexander (as he is in TNG)? He's got an excellent sense of himself and his identity as an individual from a very early age -- not in terms of his heritage on either side. He is himself, and he'll decide who and what he wants to be. Worf keeps pestering him about it, {{spoiler|and he does send himself back through time to encourage his younger self to be a warrior, because he blames himself for Worf's death}}, but in the end Worf realizes Alexander must be what he is.

* I think Azetbur in [[Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country|ST:VI]] said it best: "'Inalien'. If only you could hear yourselves. 'Human rights'. Why the very name is racist. The Federation is no more than a Homo-sapians-only club."

** This is a pretty thin argument on her part. Neither "alien" nor "human" are terms specifically connected to species in 21st-century usage (i.e. ''Homo sapiens'' is one of several known species ''of'' human; illegal aliens of the species ''H. sapiens'' are often pursued by immigration authorities). It would have made more sense to assume that by the 23rd century, "human" also includes Klingons, Vulcans, etc., and... there's no logical connection ''whatsoever'' between the word "inalienable" and any species.

 

== Why So Military? ==

** Gene Roddenberry's original vision of the future is that the people in Star Trek are 'scientists first' and 'military second'. Star Fleet was never meant to be a 'Might Makes Right' organization.

*** Which is interesting, considering the starring vessels of the show are armed to the teeth. For example, when the meeting with Chancellor Gorkon goes wrong, "We will have to count each torpedo, visually." "That could take HOURS!" Good lord, Scotty, how many antiship antimatter bombs do you HAVE onboard?

*** They are arguably in denial, but Starfleet's self-image is that they aren't a military organization. There are several instances of characters saying as much, particularly in TNG. Notably there were objections to the Enterprise engaging in war games that basically came down to "that's not what we do." The explanation for their firepower is that it's not wise to plunge into the unknown unarmed. The Defiant is considered Starfleet's first actual warship, and it was built in response to the Borg almost assimilating Earth.

**** Even in Kirk's era, the Enterprise was designated a "Heavy Cruiser" - yes a somewhat military name but the Klingon D7 (essentially the Constitution class Enterprise's opposite number) was designated a "Battle Cruiser" and the Romulans flew "Warbirds" - much more military and aggressive names.

 

== Losing My Communicator ==

** Logical behaviour is an ideal they aspire to, not necessarily a state all Vulcans have actually ''reached''. Also, in TOS, the way Spock tends to talk about logic could make one think that the use of the word 'logic' is actually just an approximate translation for Surak's teachings, and incorporates certain elements of behavior (like the whole privacy thing) which humans would consider illogical.

*** [[Fridge Brilliance|Holy crap.]] That makes ''sense''. Vulcans are illogical... according to the definition of logic understood by Western Earth cultures. It's a bad translation, because some thoughts just don't translate very well between languages and cultures.

 

== Prime Directive, Who Needs It? ==

*** It's easy to tell if a civilization has warp drive or not, whereas it might be hard to tell if they're advanced enough to make contact by other standards. For example, one popular science fiction standard for dividing 'advanced' from 'primitive' civilizations is the use of atomic power. But a civilization might simply not bother to invent nuclear weapons or nuclear reactors if they didn't have to fight a big war right around the time nuclear fission was discovered.

**** On [[Enterprise]] some crew members were captured by a pre-warp society, believing them to be spies form another country. Reed suggested the idea of just telling the civilization the truth, reasoning how much contact with the Vulcans helped Earth. Archer specifically rejected the idea because this society hadn't split the atom yet. When Earth achieved warp travel right after WWIII, society was in a much more reasonable state. There is no absolute perfect strategy, and some bronze age people might be more ready then the microchip age, but the Federation wants to eliminate the gray area that's open to reinterpretation.

**** Exactly. To wit, from the TNG Episode "First Contact", Picard saying "We prefer meeting like this rather than a random confrontation in deep space." Basically a combination of the fact that a civilization that is warp-capable is hopefully mature enough (though not necessarily; see the Ferengi, Malcorians, and maybe others), but also because they are basically forcing the issue at that point.

**** The EU implies there are other qualifications besides 'warp drive' they can hit, species just tend to hit warp drive first. It's not stated what they are, but interstellar subspace communication would logically be one of them, as that also would also quickly have them interacting with other civilizations. And we know contact with other space-faring species counts, once they are in contact with one group of aliens, contact with another group can't hurt them too badly.

** But why worry so much about introducing yourself to a "primitive" and warp-less society? Really, what's the worst that could happen?

*** You end up getting mistaken for gods and people start trying to sacrifice people for you, etc.

**** That very example was discredited in "Time's Arrow."

*** Enterprise makes the point that by waiting until the civilisation has invented Warp technology, then 'cultural contamination' would be lessened. I suppose they want the alien culture to be itself, rather than just a mimic / parrot of the race that gave them possibly the most important technology on a galactic scale. Promotes diversity, that sort of thing.

** And all this is simplified, anyway. The Federation doesn't meddle in the international affairs of any (other) civilization at all, all the way up to their allies the Klingons. From the top to the bottom, the Federation stays out of the affairs of non-members. That is the 'Prime Directive', it's not 'Don't talk to pre-warp people'. (In other words, Sisko's tricking the Romulans into the war was a Prime Directive violation.) The Federation just consider informing civilizations that don't know about aliens (and aren't about to find out about them via their new warp drive) about aliens to automatically be 'meddling'. I wouldn't be surprised if this was actually a 'court decision' interpretation of the PD instead of actual written policy.

** It's an arbitrary metric designed to make the Prime Directive enforceable, it doesn't have to make sense. Without some kind of concrete standard the only thing a Starfleet captain has to rely on is his/her own individual judgment. And if the number of times Picard and Janeway have foolishly plunged their ships into unknown spacial anomalies is any indication, common sense and good judgment is not a required skill for a Starfleet captain.

*** A rather effective demonstration of the increase in scope and dogmatification of the Prime Directive is in comparing the TOS and TNG reactions to finding a doomed world that the Enterprise can save without revealing to the world that aliens interfered - TOS had ''The Paradise Syndrome'', in which the reaction is "Starfleet rules mandates that we save this civilization, if it can be done without revealing ourselves" while TNG had ''Pen Pals'', in which the reaction is "Unless we can find a loophole, the Prime Directive forbids us from saving this civilization". From the perspective of a modern-day observer, it does look as if Starfleet forgot that the original purpose of the Prime Directive was to ''protect'' primitive cultures.

** It's merely a matter of self-protection: Any civilization capable of FTL travel is technically capable of building a spacecraft designed to crash into the Star Fleet HQ at relativistic speed, turning a good chunk of Earth into molten rock. So they figured it would be better for them to introduce themselves before things get awkward.

*** To play devil's advocate, the Federation's reasoning is probably that they can't possibly save everyone, and would wipe themselves out trying to rush around the galaxy and rescue every primitive society that faces extinction. And if they can't save everyone, then it's the height of arrogance to start picking winners and losers, choosing which planet should be saved from a purely natural disaster based on convenience, shared ideals or any other criteria. For that reason, as well as all the potential unintended consequences, the Federation's decided that it doesn't step in unless a society reaches out and asks for help. That's the rule Picard cited as justifying saving Data's pen pal; in that case, he was deliberately stretching the definition of a "call for help", but that the rule exists at all shows that the Federation isn't so much heartless as merely practical.

**** We have [[Perfect Solution Fallacy|a trope]] for this line of reasoning.

***** Except the Federation ''has'' a partial solution. It helps anyone it's allowed to have contact with, and judging by all the vaccine deliveries, comet impacts to avert and other planetary-scale disasters of the week that send the Enterprise-D running ragged every other episode, that keeps them plenty busy as it is. Starfleet even saved ''the Klingons'' from extinction, and tried to save the Romulans too. Barring infinite resources, the line for delivering aid always has to be drawn somewhere, and the people on the other side of that line will always complain that it's not fair (and it's not, but it's also unavoidable).

** Ooh, ooh! [[Fridge Brilliance]]! [[Fridge Brilliance]]! Here's the reason for the seemingly "arbitrary" standard of warp capability: The Federation doesn't bother with non-warp species because non-warp species have no way of affecting the Federation in any way. Without warp travel, any given species is effectively limited to their own solar system. So why should the Federation bother with them? They're not a threat if they don't have interstellar travel. And if they're technologically advanced enough to build a warp drive but haven't yet, then they're obviously not interested in dealing with other races and are content to remain isolated.

** At the end of the day, speaking from the perspective of a pre-Warp civilization myself, the Prime Directive just comes across as rather patronizing. "We will not make contact with your planet because in our wisdom we already know, without so much as ''needing'' said contact to inform our decision, that there is just no way you primitive screwheads could possibly handle it." In other words, it's the Federation's excuse to act as [[Neglectful Precursors]].

*** It's called a Bright Line Rule, and it's why it's illegal for a person one day away from their 21st birthday to buy beer, but legal for a person one day after his 21st birthday to do so. Warp capability makes perfect sense as a Bright Line test, since before that, the chances of the civilization is insular, but once it has warp drive it's only a matter of time before they make contact with an interstellar species, so let's make contact first before the Romulans beat us to it. Warp-capability doesn't seem to be the only standard for contact, if my memory serves, the civilization the Enterprise was observing in the episode "First Contact" was pre-warp, but the Federation was close to making first contact, so probably some sort of balancing test is also used, no doubt weighing factors like ethical advancement, political stability, lack of complicating factors like religious extremist sects or national factionalism etc. But warp-capability forces the issue of contact, because a warp-capable species just cursing around the galaxy with no knowledge of its other inhabitants is a recipe for trouble.

* I always looked at it like the Federation didn't want to interrupt the evolution of a culture. Personally I can see why it would get annoying if some random aliens landed on my planet and paraded around with their technology. I figured that was why the Vulcans waited until we achieved Warp drive. This way you don't get a bunch of planets which are basically Federation clones by imposing your technology.

* The Federation itself. It's a monoculture with a few clearances for physiology (e.g. Vulcan) and "silly superstitions" small enough to be dismissed. The game is "assimilate or be assimilated", and it's afraid of falling apart. It enacts frantic control-freakery to the point where communications are ''dangerously'' centralized, ship crews don't have good crypto and their reconnaissance armed forces leave the Academy so [[Mildly Military]] they are blissfully ignorant in the area of tactics, or things like signal intelligence. It already has tenuous control over anything - simply due to cowboys and bureaucrats with vastly different approach to the same stated values being both inherent parts of the system. What could happen if values and beliefs that are not variations of their own (and not that of an enemy) are introduced? Even if they don't have problems with adding extra population - which is likely - should Federation widely interact with those not ready for unification, it will be influenced bit by bit, until it develops internal factions badly compatible with each other and accumulate more internal tensions than it can hold together.

 

== Kirk's Dark Side Has Amnesia? ==

 

 

** There was an episode in season one of ''TNG'' where a child who looks to be about ten years old was complaining about having to go to ''calculus'' class. I think you have your answer.

** Basically, a ''normal'' Starfleet officer is near what we consider expert level in several sciences, engineering, combat, law enforcement, and diplomacy. When you add a specialisation on top of that, you hit outright [[Future Badass]] level in that discipline. May have a slight connection to [[Evolutionary Levels]].

*** Think about this: the Academy (as nicely shown in the most recent movie) has enough cadets around to staff approximately eight to ten ships. These cadets are drawn from the finest students on every world of the Federation. We're almost literally talking about one in a billion talents for even the lowest security officer. Out of Earth's current population, there's probably only ten people who'd be good enough for Starfleet Academy.

*** The main cast of ''Deep Space Nine'' may be in mostly non-combat professions, but they're still ''members of a military organization''. And like any military organization, Starfleet obviously gives combat training to ''all'' of its recruits, not just its security officers.

*** I think those are pretty big things to just count out, especially in the case of O'Brien and Jadzia. They know how to shoot a gun because of long experience, and guns are pretty equalising now matter how good Jem'Hadar are. It still stretches my ability to accept it when Jadzia beats Klingons or Jem'Hadar in hand-to-hand though, for all that Curzon was a master of Klingon martial arts...

**** Jadzia doesn't just have old memories. It's indicated from early on that she stays in practice, and is one of the best hand-to-hand fighters on the station, and, though not quite as strong as Curzon was, still a superb athlete.

# Logistical problems. A small number of ships spreads over vast space and rarely gets close to a friendly base. The Federation claims vastly greater territory than it can survey well, much less cover in supply bases - and barely can protect - and it still sends some to explore outside when there's no big war. The warp drives are just slow enough that ships cannot expect supplies in time and must carry everything they may possibly need for any short term mission they can feasibly run into.

# Political convenience. As in, plausible deniability. "We're explorers, not soldiers"(c) - or "We did not send ''spies''! We have sent just... scientists who happened to be nearby. Honest. The vessel in question is widely known for this and that discovery."

 

== This Universe Ain't Big Enough for the Both of Us ==

** Mostly because what a lot of fans consider "intelligent" uses of technology is often a game-breaker that would ruin the plot of the show just for the sake of being clever with having powergamed tech ideas, and/or not necessarily something the technology can do just because the concept seems easy to the outside observer, and/or disturbingly amoral bordering on flat-out evil.

* Starfleet is run by the bureaucrats enough that it got turned into panopticum of ludicrously bad engineering and design.

 

== Send Out the Clones ==

* Why is the Federation filled with luddites? How can such an advanced society be so hung up about clones and genetic engineering? Whenever a genetically engineered or cloned person appears, the Enterprise crew reacts with awe and dread. Sometimes, the appearance of a clone warrants a commercial break.

*** That's not even mentioning when TNG episode with the genetically engineered uberkinder who had immune systems so effective, they killed normal people...

** Wait, what? What on Earth gave you the impression that the Federation, the people who put ''touch screens'' on '''a pair of barbells''', are in any way "luddites"?

** The problem with cloning and genetic engineering seems to be more of a fear of the past. As they said in one episode, "For every Julian Bashir, there's a Khan Singh waiting ni the wings." Given the abysmal catastrophies that cloning and genetic engineering have created in the past, no one wants to take the chance again.

 

== Picard's No Solid Snake ==

== Boldly Going Where No Waiter's Gone Before ==

* Why do restaurants and bars still need wait staffs? Why don't they just put food replicators at everybody's tables? It's not like Quark, Whoopie Goldberg, Neelix and Sisko's father need jobs, right? Nobody does. Because they don't use money, right?

*** You don't see why someone would want to develop a relationship with a bartender? I love my favorite bartenders, I'd miss them so much if I stopped drinking there or they quit or whatever, and they don't have a tenth of Guinan's insightfulness.

** I always thought Sisko's father had a resturant just because he enjoyed cooking and serving people. As for the waiters i've got nuffin. Acutally what do humans do in a world where we don't need money and everthing is handed to you on a replicated plate?

*** Keep in mind that Scotty had to pull off a lot of jury rigged [[Applied Phlebotinum]] to make his suspended animation trick work. Most of the time, if the transporter chief doesn't either complete the tranport or send them back within a matter of seconds, they're dead. Of course, this doesn't explain why [[Forgotten Phlebotinum|things didn't change]] once they'd found out how Scotty made it work.

*** Worse yet: we know they have stasis fields, so why don't they have a nice, medical stasis room, beam the extra casualties there, and then beam them out when there's room on the table? It's not like being beamed is equivalent to the normal problem with moving highly injured folks.

** Of course the fact that their bodies can be stored in the holodeck is even worse, Fridge Logic-wise. I'm pretty sure the holodeck can duplicate characters. So stick their bodies, without their minds, in there, work on them, if you save them, beam them out, if you don't, work from a backup of their body. Even if you only get an hour or so before their 'pattern degrades', it's still safer.

*** They probably don't do that because they're afraid of Professor Moriarty, Minuette, or even program Riker 6.

** This always bugged me too. Especially this: if you're beaming someone up with horribly life-threatening wounds, you're completely disassembling them and reassembling them on the transporter pad atom by atom. Well, why not simply reassemble them WITHOUT all the horribly life-threatening wounds? If fact, you could create a literal fountain of youth if you decided to reassemble them so they were physically much younger (like in TNG: "Rascals"), though maybe a little bit older, like 18 or 21.

*** Because seen from a molecular level, most organisms are extremely complex. It's one thing to dis- and then reassemble something after a template, but actively changing things? The results could be [[Nightmare Fuel]].

 

== Where Did All the Religious People Go? ==

** What do you want them to do? Have Commander Goldman eating a bagel while reminding the captain he can't work on Saturday? For one, it can get offensive pretty easy just like my example. For two it's the 24th century. All religions that exist now still exist, but people aren't jerks about trying to force their religion's dogma on the rest of the universe anymore. Also we always see military installations, and usually when people are on duty. That's not an appropriate time to discuss religion. In fact, there have been religious humans in Trek. (a catholic in TOS, Joeseph Sisko quotes from the bible, and it's implied O'Brien's wife is a buddist, just off the top of my head) As a further note, some forms of Islam and Hinduism both forbid military service. That's one of the in-universe reasons that there are so few South Asian and Middle Eastern crew members on starships.

** It's also a documented fact that religious belief (on Earth anyway) is negatively correlated with widespread scientific understanding of the universe. Put simply, in Star Trek science has advanced to the point that many of the Earth religions relying on miracles and such are simply viewed as incompatible with what's known about reality. Most people simply don't believe in them anymore for this reason. Remember, Starfleet personnel are some of the best educated people around. Education is also negatively correlated with religious belief.

*** I couldn't figure out which of the many polls listed you were referring to, but I'll take your word for it. Harris polls of Americans are just a little irrelevant because of the off the charts level of religiosity Americans demonstrate when compared to our peers. In the broader Western world, far fewer educated people believe in Christianity or other miraculous religions. Surveys of members of the Royal Academy of Sciences (UK) and the National Academy of Science (USA) show that a vast majority of the best scientists in these two countries do not believe in a god. When you consider that the humans portrayed on Star Trek would probably be the equivalent of members of the Academies, it makes perfect sense that few are religious. This troper has found that nearly all of her friends who achieve a M.S. do not remain believing Christians. Some become deists, but most become atheists or agnostics.

*** Your experience does not equal reality. Bluntly, religion is something that's not remotely disappearing. Europe had this view for a while and now seems to be uncomfortably aware it's not just the United States that seems to have an overfondness for it.

*** Feel free to scientifically explain the Q for us. If you can.

*** Yes, feel free to scientifically explain a species who's very shtick is that they operate on a level of scientific understanding that is as far beyond us as we are beyond microbes. That's a ''perfectly'' logical argument. The Q aren't gods, they just have more understanding then we do. The same is true of all beings like them. See: [[Sufficiently Advanced Alien]]

* I don't know, but I'm pretty sure I saw some [[Space Jews|Space Fundies]] in the episode ''Let He Who Is Without Sin...''. They were complaining about the sinful ways of Risa or something like that.

* I write Star Trek fanfic and myself and others on my fanfic site have written characters with religious beliefs. My theory is that they're still there; after all, Sisko's dad once quoted the Bible. They've just restructured themselves to do away with the "God made marriage for one man and one woman!", "Jesus said I can have guns!", "The path to Allah is terrorism!" soundbytes and all that crap. Now, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and others are structured to being a better person, teaching about love, understanding and tolerance, which is still important if the Federation is to keep the moral high ground.

* In many ways, Gene Roddenberry's death opened the Star Trek canon to considerable ''improvement'' on this subject, widening the theories and interpretations available.

* At the start of Star Trek 3, Kirk finds out that McCoy has [[Brain In a Jar|Spock's Brain ]] in his head and they need to do something about it. But crucially '''he has no idea that Spock's body has been 'resurected' on Genesis''', and neither does Sarek or anyone else. As far as they know the body was incinerated when they [[Meaningful Funeral|fired it off inside a torpedo]] and there is nothing left, Saavik was surprised to find it was intact on the surface and later on Kirk was certainly surprised to find that [[First Law of Resurrection|Spock was alive]]. So why do they feel the need to steal the Enterprise and travel to Genesis? If you forget about the Klingons, the Grissom, [[Mate or Die|Spock boffing Saavik]] and all that other stuff that '''they don't know is happening''', [[So What Do We Do Now?|what were they planning to do when they arrived?]] The most sensible thing to do, given the information they have available, is to get a few tickets on a commercial trip to Vulcan so someone can extract that annoying Katra and let McCoy get back to being grumpy. There is no reason to even consider going to Genesis, well except that [[Just Eat Gilligan|the film would be pretty brief without it]].

** For the sake of argument let's say that Sarek explains offscreen that the dead body is required for the katra ritual (even though Spock speaking through McCoy first says "take me to Vulcan", not "we need to go back to Genesis", and if the body ''is'' crucial you'd think Spock would have made sure to slip a "take my body back to Vulcan" into his final conversation with Kirk rather than risk driving Bones insane). This raises another question - what the hell is Starfleet's problem? You've got a top-level diplomat from one of the Federation's most important worlds, who's understandably upset that his son's body has been dumped on an alien planet rather than brought home in accordance with his culture. Even if you can't agree to another ship going into that sector to go get him, why not contact your ship that's ''already in orbit'' and tell them to take ten seconds to beam the tube aboard?

 

== No Romulan Ale For You! ==

**** The Neutral Zone is only off-limits to the Federation and the Romulans (and often not them, either, it seems). Even the Jem'Hadar were allowed to use it before they found themselves at war with the Federation ''and'' the Romulans. So there should be neutral species at peace with both powers who can carry ale into the Federation. Of course, if the embargo is strict enough, a third-party middleman wouldn't be legal, either, as with Cuban products in the United States.

**** And it is, amusingly one of the most loosely enforced laws on the books. Every time they break out the Romulan Ale, someone remarks that it is illegal, yet it is given as gifts amongst officers, a Federation starship on a diplomatic mission has it in stock to serve to foreign dignitaries, and it is even brought up during Kirk and McCoy's trial on Q'Onos in ''[[Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country|Star Trek VI the Undiscovered Country]]''. Notably, it ''wasn't'' brought up to discredit them because it was illegal, but merely to bring up the possibility that McCoy was ''drunk''. If there was a great time for anyone to use Romulan Ale's illegality against the heroes, that would have been it. So why didn't they? Even in a sham trial, ''nobody cared.'' Presumably both the Romulans and Federation turn a blind eye to traders carrying the stuff back and forth, because the humans like to drink it and the Romulans like to sell it. Hell, [[Wild Mass Guessing|the traders might even double as low-profile spies and couriers]], discretely carrying information (and booze) back and forth, giving both sides further reason to laxly enforce the embargo: If one side cracks down, their own information flow from the other side gets clamped off too.

** Presumably it's a deliberate parallel to Cuban tobacco products being illegal in the US.

** Because it ''[[Gargle Blaster|should]]'' be ([[Hangover Sensitivity|owwww]]).

 

== United Federation of Nutcase Bureaucrats? ==

*** It's a variation on what was actually said - something akin to "Two to beam up, Mr. Scott" - that became associated with the show as something that you ''might hear'' being said.

**** "Scotty, beam me up" was used. Flipping the order so you start to say "Beam" first lets the listener know exactly which reference they're in for.

 

== Kirk's Bad With Dates (Not That Kind) ==

* On the subject of film chronology: the given time gaps between "Space Seed", "Wrath of Khan" and "Generations" don't add up. "Wrath of Khan" takes place when Kirk is turning 50 - that's the year 2283. They say that "Space Seed" happened fifteen years ago - officially, it happened in 2267, which is OK assuming they're rounding off. But then the Kirk-era part of "Generations" takes place in 2293... and in Kirk's Nexus fantasy, Kirk says "This is nine years ago!" Nine years ago, Kirk would have been commanding the Enterprise-A. If they wanted the fantasy scene to be of a time just prior to "Wrath of Khan" (which it seems was the intention), they should've said "''eleven'' years ago".

 

== Time Cops Are Useless ==

*** I did. It's just a list of episodes people don't like, not actual complaints about how it fits into canon.

*** [[User:Crazyrabbits]]: To explain just how several episodes violate the previous continuity of the franchise would take an amount of space that no one is willing to give here. It's best to just note the biggest canon screw-ups and move on.

***** Typical of most complaints about alleged "disregard" of ''Enterprise'' for established canon, these examples misstate the canon in question and/or totally ignore fridge logic. The Federation had limited knowledge of the Feringi since well before "Last Outpost". I believe they were first referenced in "Encounter At Farpoint", and rumors about them proceeded official first contact by the Enterprise; clearly, there had been contact between humans and Federation members and the Feringi preceding "official" first contact in the ''Last Outpost''. That a lone raiding party of a half dozen Feringi could have made contacted with a Human vessel two centuries prior is hardly canon-busting. The identity of the raiders the Enterprise NX encountered was probably never confirmed until the Enterprise D made contact. Likewise, the Enterprise NX encounter with the Borg does nothing to disrupt continuity. The incident would have obviously been highly classified by Star Fleet, and not common knowledge in the 24th Century. Due to secrecy and two centuries of obscurity, there may not have even been a record in the Enterprise D's computer, and even if was, the circumstance of the encounter were so widely different that even a walking search engine like Data might not have been able to put together the pieces in time. No doubt after the Enterprise D returned from its first encounter with the Borg and filed their report with Star Fleet, some analyst at Star Fleet HQ probably started digging into every file Star Fleet had involving cybernetic lifeforms and came across a 200-year old log from Captain Johnathan Archer, but obviously we wouldn't have seen that and since it wouldn't have provided much, if any new information, it's unsurprising it was never brought up.

*** Well as for the Ferengi, ''Deep Space Nine'' had retconned that before. The Ferengi Alliance is one of the great civilizations that borders the Federation and has had contact with their allies for decades/centuries. The only thing they did "wrong" was sticking to the ''Deep Space Nine'' retcon. (And making an idiot plot episode.) The Borg ordeal was classified, and mostly forgotten about since it was 200 years later. (How much do you think remains of classified documents from 1800 today?) Plus, the Federation had fought numerous wars between ENT and TNG that were a slightly higher priority than a threat that may or may not come in 200 years (off the top, the Earth-Romulan war, the multiple Klingon wars, the Cardassian war that went on for 20 years, and there's more that aren't coming immediately to mind.) Any one of these wars enough might be enough to explain why they didn't do anthing about it, and all of them coupled with all the time that passed should more than explain it. Transporters have always been inconsistent in speed besides, [[Artistic License]]. What do you want the NX-01 to look like? It just had a better model (again [[Artistic License]]), as far as an actual ship, I'd rather be on NCC-1701. It clearly has more advanced tech. (Tractor beams, variable yeild photon torpedos, a Warp 8 engine). In fact, my girlfriend has the opposite complaint and hated the look of the NX-01 because it seemed too present day and ''not'' as futuristic as NCC-1701. Heck, in "In a Mirror Darkly" the crew of the mirror universe's ''Enterprise'' seems to think a 23rd century ship is a marvel of science.

 

== Super-Special Holodeck Batteries? ==

** That was a [[Voodoo Shark]] to explain why they could let the writers play with the Holodeck when they were otherwise rationing power, especially replicator power. Their power troubles eased off after a while... your call whether that made it better or worse.

** Possibly unintended [[Fridge Brilliance]] - with so many holodec disasters such as Moriarty any whatnot in the past, the incompatible power source may have been a deliberate move on Starfleet's end so that power to the holodec could be cut off immediately if necessary, without any rogue programs being able to divert power from another part of the ship in order to sustain themselves. The real problem could be less converting the power than overriding whatever system was put in place to keep the power source seperate from the rest of the ship's systems. What's more confusing is that the EMH doesn't run on the same juice, or if he does, why they don't ration holodec usage anyway so that they don't burn through his time too quickly.

*** Rogue programs or... humans suffering holodiction?..

 

== We've Been Boarded! Oh well... ==

*** Used in William Shatner's "Totality" trilogy. The alien beings from the invading "Totality" are made of Dark Matter, and don't really like gravity fields. They can barely stand one G, and disintegrate under higher weights. As they can impersonate people similarly to the Founders, Starfleet quickly institutes a policy of regularly turning up the gravity all over the ship, and keeping officers' quarters constantly on high.

** Also, you can play with temperature. Humans can function just fine at temperatures well below those at which Klingons curl up into shivering balls. Since Klingons are humans' greatest enemies in TOS, the movies, and a season of ''Deep Space Nine'', you'd think they'd have used it to their advantage once or twice. The same thing would work on Cardassians, too; they're comfortable at temperatures which are too warm for most other species, even non-humanoids like the Founders. So chances are they wouldn't be able to fight effectively if they boarded Deep Space Nine and O'Brien lowered the temperature to, say, 273 K (the freezing point of water).

 

== Emergency Redshirt Holograms ==

 

== Ferengi Speech Impediment? ==

** Possibly they're saying it in such a way that it's a subtle insult to humans--the term could be a reference to Ferengi anatomy or bodily functions. On the other hand, it could be that the word "human" itself is the bad word, and Ferengi pronounce it differently to differentiate from the Ferengi word for "scrotum" or whatever.

** Probably for the same reason that universal translators don't translate DRAMATIC Klingon words into English - racial affectation.

** The Ferengi probably have words for the other species which the Universal Translators render into English (or Federation Standard Speech or whatever it's called.) When they say "hew-MON," they're actually sounding out the English word, which the Universal Translator doesn't or can't overdub.

*** [[Fridge Brilliance]]! Have we ever actually heard Ferengi language? Maybe for some reason the word for "human" is more closely from English (or Federation Standard), while other race names have assimilated better or had more time to assimilate. "Human" may be an incredibly foreign sound in the Ferengi tongue, so they take extra care with it. <ref>Though my money's on the slur.</ref>

** Could just be a racial slur. Notice that Rom and Nog slow down their usage of it as they start to become friends with humans, but Quark keeps it up as hew-MONS are always interfering with his profits (in his mind, at least).

* More support for the "slur" theory comes from our own language. The most racially insulting term there is for a black person in English comes from accumulated distortions to the Spanish term for "black" which is ''negro''. For all we know, "hew-mons" may even be a politer term than some that the Ferengi have for us (the way "negroes" is not entirely an offensive term, though it does raise eyebrows if you use it these days).

 

== Marriage in the 24th Century ==

* WHY are pretty much ''all'' women, 200-300 years in the future, STILL automatically taking their husband's names? Does this bug the heck out of nobody but me?

** Umm... examples? The only ones I can think of is Kiko O'Brian and Dr. Crusher (see below). Troi didn't change her name (see below), Jadzia didn't change her name (she's a Trill and she married a Klingon, so who knows what the name convention is), and in the case of most of the other married couples we meet, there's actually nothing to say for sure that the husband didn't take ''his wife's'' name.

*** Betazoid culture is matrilineal; Deanna's father took her mother's surname. Will probably won't, but Deanna is unlikely to insist upon it as much as her mother would have to Ian Troi.

** Same reason pretty much all women 200-300 years in the future still grow their hair long and wear make-up, I suppose.

** Pretty much it does bug the heck out of nobody but you, yes.

*** Yeah, but if I had an ongoing relationship with a co-worker which invovled me refering to them using racial abuse and slang all the time, I don't think I'd get very far with the HR dept by saying 'thats just how we express ourselves, we're friends really'.

*** Kirk was the captain, and he was close friends with both Spock and Bones. If the captain says it's okay, then it's okay. In order for it to become an issue, someone would have to care. There seem to be no other Vulcans on the ''Enterprise,'' so they're not around to object, and maybe the humans just don't care, or don't think it's their place to say anything.

*** Large organisations like the military or big companies just don't work like that, not even today never mind in our enlightened tolerant future. Try going to a modern warship and have the chief medical officer routinely call the single black officer on the ship, who happens to be the first officer, a 'Black skinned, inhuman freak, etc, etc' as a term of 'endearment' and see how long it lasts, irrespective of whether he's offended by it or the Captain says 'its ok'. Firstly no Captain would say that and if they did they would probably end up in an enquiry as well.

**** Fridge Brilliance: In most military units, the guy in day-to-day charge of administrative discipline (that is, actually doing the paperwork on disciplinary offenses) is the executive officer. The reason McCoy's behavior towards Spock is not being written up is because its Spock's job to do the writing up, and he doesn't care.

*** That's not really a fair comparison. For one thing, Spock ''is'' inhuman. For another, there's hundreds and hundreds of years of black-white relations to be considered in the real world, whereas Vulcans and humans have been living side by side peacefully for centuries (at least until ''Enterprise'' fucked it up, but that doesn't count). And Vulcans in general aren't even capable of ''being'' offended, or at least strive not to be.

**** Spock is, in fact, half human. Much of McCoy's disagreement with Spock stems from Spock's rejection of his own humanity. On the occasions when he meets full-blooded Vulcans, McCoy is properly respectful and polite. For that matter, Spock pulls no punches when it comes to criticizing his human crewmates for their humanity.

** You should try watching Enterprise, Trip and Archer engage in a four year long game of "who hates Vulcans the most?" with occasional

** As for your question about T'Pol, Archer and Tucker may have been dicks to her (no one else seemed to have that much of a problem with her being Vulcan) but she was pretty racist herself. Criticizing our omnivorous diet because it goes against Vulcan morality (suddenly they're all vegetarians, a fact which Spock and Tuvok and Saavik and all the others never mentioned) ''in the same scene where she chides Archer and Tucker to stop applying their morality to alien species.'' All that stuff about the smell. Pissing on Hoshi, who never did anything anti-Vulcan to her, unlike Archer and Tucker, and generally being obnoxious all around.

 

== Edith Keeler Banned from the Future? ==

** We don't see the method by which they get back. One moment they're weeping on the street, the next they're just coming back to the Guardian's planet side of the Guardian. It probably only opened a portal when there was no possibility of the timeline being skewed again.

** Likewise, the future had already been changed before they left, so, due to the way the Guardian's portal works, they probably couldn't return to their own future until after Edith had died. They had to restore the past to make the portal lead back to the Enterprise.

** The impression I got was that they never had the chance to really plan. She's killed only seconds after they reunite with McCoy, before they have a chance to do anything.

 

== Balok's Puppet... Brr... ==

** Site-to-site transporting is ''extremely'' power-intensive. Not to mention that the targeted crewman would have to be standing perfectly still or else the phaser would end up transported ''into'' their body by mistake.

*** The transporter-to-the-brig idea above is much more convenient, especially if you custom make the brig to have a transporter pad built in. Then it becomes point-to-pad, not point-to-point. Confiscating prisoner weapons? It's canon that a transporter can be preset to selectively choose what to transport, so that's no issue. (one running gag in any Academy-Days storyline is cadets infiltrating the transporter room immediately before its use by an intended victim, and setting it to not transport anything matching the molecular structure of nylon, rayon, or other common synthetic fibers found in cadet uniforms. Cue the victim appearing at his destination in falling-apart rags if not outright naked.). You can make that "transporter-to-the-escape-pod" if you prefer to run away from a fight.

 

== I Want to Be a Federation Janitor When I Grow Up! ==

*** Why wouldn't they be? Because they're not on starships, where such a thing would be an advantage. And even if they weren't, you're telling me that no one ever has to go fish Sewerbot #242 out of Junction 1234X because it's jammed or some stupid kids have covered a statue of Admiral Archer in Ferengi graffiti? Even if they have machines for that sort of thing, no one 's running them? Even by remote control? No sale, sir!

*** No matter how shitty a job is you can always find someone who honest-to-god-actually ''enjoys'' doing it. It's like [[Rule 34]] of employment. Plus jobs aren't just about money, there is a social element to them as well. People enjoy getting out of the house, doing stuff, mixing with others, and feeling useful in society at large. I bet there is an employment ladder thing there too, y'wanna do #cleannicejob, well there is four hundred people wanting that, so we'll only give it to you if you've done #dirtynastyjob first.

*** In one episode, it is mentioned that the Enterprise-D has some ability to clean itself (specifically, someone gets told that they don't ''have'' to clean up something, the ship will do that for them). And running the machines, well, that changes the nature of the job.

** I got the impression that officers were paid, but, as Picard said, "The acquisition of wealth is no longer our primary goal." So they get paid, but the majority of people don't care about the amount, just that they're contributing to society.

* We've seen how powerful anti-matter is in the Trekkiverse? Why is that ''no one'' seems to have weaponized the stuff? Even in a "we used to do that, but the stuff is way too dangerous" manner?

** Photon torpedoes use antimatter warheads. There's been other references too, like the Vulcan civil wars being fought with antimatter bombs, and the Enterprise-D using an antimatter spread to attack a Borg cube. And the planet killer used an antiproton beam to slice through planets.

 

== Those Ships Need Seat Belts! ==

== Lily-White Starfleet? ==

* The biggest question of them all: where are all the ethnicities? This becomes a major head against wall moment for this troper, because the timeline of the Star Trek universes includes several major wars, including a nuclear World War III that supposedly killed 600 million people. It would be fair to assume that most of these casualties occured in the world's most powerful nations, namely, the United States, Europe, Russia, and China. ''So why do white people still make up 90% of Starfleet?'' The world population has always been overwhelmingly non-white, so any world government/military would reflect that one-fifth of the the world population is Chinese, one-fifth Indian, one-fifth African, and two-fifths various other ethnicities. Starfleet also seems to prefer rather Anglo names for its ships. Star Trek in all its incarnations has been noted for being progressive for showing different ethnicities, and has gotten better at doing so over time, but it always bugs this troper how it appears all non-white populations are minorities in the future.

**** Most humans should be African, then. If Asia got wiped out, that would make Africa the most populous continent. [[Broken Aesop|Discrimination in Starfleet, you say?]]

**** Geordi LaForge is an African, not an African-American. Miles O'Brien is Irish, and Dr. Bashir is most likely of Middle Eastern descent. Presumably a fair amount of the humans aren't Americans but just sound like they have American (or English) accents due to the Universal Translator.

*** It possibly has to do with China being decimated by World War III. Maybe the population loss was so much that they really ''are'' proportionally represented in Starfleet? Or Japan imposed their culture on China during WWIII, liked they tried to do in WWII, so some people of Chinese descent ended up with Japanese names?

**** Along those same lines, it's also noteworthy that the eastern half of the United States is almost never mentioned in Trek, and cities like New York and Washington DC don't seem to exist. Characters from North America usually hail from the rural midwest or the west coast, and the Earth government's based in San Francisco. It may be that the nuclear war was fought between China and the U.S., and both mainland China and the eastern U.S. were hit so hard that their populations fell permenantly behind everyone else.

** Given that regions such as China and India ''are'' so densely populated, it could be that those ethnic groups were among the first populations to migrate ''en masse'' to colony worlds. Their colonies would therefore be the longest-established human settlements outside our solar system, which would make them the best-defended and most-civilized ... hence, the ''least'' likely planets to require a visit from an exploratory vessel like the ''Enterprise''. They do exist, we just don't see episodes about them.

** Err... is there any actual evidence that "only Caucasians showed up" to casting calls for extras? May have been truer in the 1960s, but from the '80s onward?

*** Also, the names of ships and planets in Star Trek are still Anglo- and Euro-centric, which has nothing to do with filming location.

** As [[SF Debris]] pointed out in his review of TNG's "Code of Honor", it ''is'' entirely possible to cast an entire planet filled with black people, so they certainly could be more ethnically diverse if they wanted to.

*** It's interesting that your and OP's definitions of diversity seem to be less "showing a variety of different ethnicities" and more "having fewer white people". Comes off sort of racist if you think about it.

 

== Spock's Fabulous Makeup ==

** The earlier draft of the script specified this.

** Notice how quickly she was reeducated. She was all better by the next episode, as I recall. Pretty good, considering she was starting from scratch (ie, kindergarten) and it presumably took about twenty years for her to acquire her education the first time.

 

== Always Keep a Spare Bridge Crew in the Trunk ==

** Possibly those stations just aren't ever supposed to be left unmanned unless there's no alternative, so the nearest qualified person takes them until the 'official' replacement shows up.

*** Yeah, I'd guess there are some stations more vital than others and the bridge crew has some cross-training on them, so if one's vacated they can just switch what they're doing to "autopilot" and run over to the other one.

 

== Holographic Doctors Ain't Got No Soul? ==

* In Star Trek IV, how does Scotty get the computer to work so quickly? It has to be explained to him that it doesn't have a human-language-parsing voice interface like he's used to, but once he's told that the I/O is via keyboard, he not only figures out the interface with no difficulty at all, but manages to construct a 3D graphic on a Mac ''without touching the mouse''.

** TNG offers a truly shocking blink if you miss explanation as to just how Scotty might have come by those mad keyboard skills. In the Enterprise's computer core, the interface isn't one of the standard 24th century touch screens. It's a CRT monitor and a standard keyboard (although the keyboard looks slightly high tech by today's standards and probably looked more futuristic back when the episode aired in 1989). So, even in the 24th century where every command function on the bridge is controlled by touch panels, at the heart of the computer controlling it all is a terminal that seems to deliberately be intensely old school. I wouldn't be surprised if the damn thing has bios and a command prompt.

 

== Working Day and Night? ==

== What does the Alpha Quadrant Look like? ==

* When the dust had settled, you pretty much had four great powers in the Alpha Quadrant: the Federation, the Klingons, the Romulans, and the Cardassians. Then there are secondary powers like the Ferengi, the Breen, and the Nausicaans, and one-off species like the Tzenkethi and the Son'a; but dealing just with the Core Four, this is complex enough, so let's leave them be.

* At different points, each of the four powers is referred to as sharing a border with each of the other three. Assuming they all have contiguous territories--which I guess they might not--there are only two possible explanations: There's a point where the borders of all four come together at a ninety-degree angle and they meet in some center, like Colorado, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico; or three of them have borders that ''would'' come together and meet at a 120-degree angle (like an equilateral triangle divided into thirds) and the fourth one being plunked down in the center of this and extending out from the central point.

* Actually, the former doesn't work, either: The Federation had a Klingon Neutral Zone ''and'' a Romulan Neutral Zone ''and'' a Cardassian DMZ. So it had borders with all three extending for a good while. For the Square States model to work, it would only touch one of the three at a geometric point.

* As for the latter setup--I guess it works, but it's pretty stupid, isn't it?

** Allow me to introduce you to a concept called "3 Dimensions". Space is not a flat map where 4 regions can only meet at a single corner. Granted, this *is* Star Trek which adores the [[Space Is an Ocean]] trope. The boundaries can wander and roam all over the place, and it would be pretty easy for all 4 empires to share stretches of contiguous border.

** The relevance of the third dimension depends how big the empires are: the Galaxy is much narrower along its "vertical" axis (its thickness is only 1% of its diameter). While this is still an enormous distance, and it's reasonable to expect overlap, we're also dealing with incomprehensibly-huge nations here that may well extend far further than that in the "horizontal" plane. Assuming they each spread evenly from a central point, the borders would reasonably tend to line up when viewed from above.

* And another thing: Federation space includes a bajillion species, both Fed members and pre-warp civilizations whom they ignore under the Prime Directive but protect from foreign interlopers by maintaining their own territorial integrity. The Romulans have only the Remans. The Cardassians had only the Bajorans until they got thrown out. The Klingons tried to enslave two races in TOS and had one whom they had enslaved in ENT. But for the most part all three species had their space to themselves.

* Now assuming that the likelihood of a Class-M planet will develop an intelligent race is pretty much the same anywhere (and I can't see any reason it wouldn't be) that means that the Federation is either much larger territorially than the others, or it has a much denser concentration of inhabitable planets, which one assumes mean many more resources to exploit. Either of those factors would give it a huge advantage over the other civilizations, would make the the Alpha Quadrant's dominant superpower. But it deals with each of the other three as equals most of the time.

** Remember the Federation supposedly has no military, that most of Starfleet's ships are equipped for research and humanitarian aid and that most of the crew signed up for the engineering or scientific opportunities. Starfleet simply doesn't operate on the level of the Cardassian or Klingon militaries; it seems reasonable that the Federation must be many times larger and more (economically) powerful if it's even able to maintain an equal relationship. Even when they get onto a "war" footing, they're still mostly using obsolete ships (notice the ''Excelsior''-class appears a lot in Deep Space Nine), crewed by personnel with woefully inadequate combat training, as they have no dedicated military academy or warship production facilities. The few instances where a ship or crew is up to scratch militarily (the ''Defiant'', any ''Galaxy''-class with the children offloaded) they're normally portrayed as being able to tear through enemy ships by the dozen, with the exception of the very first battle with the Dominion.

 

== Rank Structure ==

* The "personal authority" thing probably has to do with who is captain of what - the personal authority cited is Kirk's as "Captain of the Enterprise.". Presumably, a captain of a ship has some authority over even higher-ranked visitors, which technically is what Decker was. As for T'Pol, she was an exchange officer. Starfleet might just have given her an acting rank while she served as part of the Enterprise's crew.

* Considering the importance of the chain of command is highlighted numerous times, and cited by name, it sounds like you're just latching onto a handful of anomalous instances and making an issue out of them.

 

== Vulcans and Romulans ==

 

* David Marcus: Raised only by his mother, who went out of her way to keep him from his father until he was an adult. (Which gives us the [[Fridge Horror]] of realizing that while Kirk was warping around the galaxy earning our respect and admiration, he was arguably a deadbeat dad, though it's not exactly like he was receiving and ignoring repeated requests from Carol for child support, or anything.)

 

* Wesley Crusher: Raised only by his mother. His father died when he was very young.

** Most ground engagements in the show are fought either around or near towns, or small areas of ground such as rocky areas riddled with caves or canyon passes.

** By the look of it, they are severely crippled from political and social sides.

 

 

** If your sensors are strong enough, it wouldn't actually be that hard. You look for a mass of interconnected heat with both the rhythm of a heart near the first heat center and a secondary heat center where the brain should be.

*** Yet when they first encounter the Borg, they fail to detect lifesigns from them, and the Borg presumably have hearts and brains.

** Bioelectrical signals. Heartbeats. Heat signatures of a certain size that are within a typical range for living creatures. Certain types of motion. Particular chemicals or substances that mostly only show up in life forms. Basically they're scanning for all of it and when you start getting hits on multiple factors you figure that's probably a life sign. Also the Borg might have hearts and brains but they no longer work like a normal life form's. The heart might only beat when it needs to pump repair nanites through the body, or it might have been replaced by a pump that's just constantly cycling blood through, like a fishtank filter. In essence the Borg don't show up because despite their biological parts they function like machines. That's why they sometimes show up as "Possible lifesigns". Besides, by ''First Contact'' they've clearly figured out how to scan for Borg lifesigns as well, as Data's able to determine the Earth's Borg population.

** The second part of this question answers the first: they look for signatures of [[Rubber Forehead Aliens|humanoid]] (often enough to count as [[Human Subspecies]]) lifeforms.

 

== I claim this planet in the name of... ==

== Genetically engineered half-humans ==

* A fairly big point in star trek is genetic engineering being highly, highly illegal. Yet, genetic engineering is neccesary to produce half-human (or other) hybrids, which is fully accepted. But no one ever brings this up. And it also presents a massive loophole for everyone who wants to circumvent the anti-genetic engineering law. Why would Bashir's parents do it the illegal way if they could have just combined their son with alien DNA instead?

*** Sort of makes one wonder how the genetic engineering project underway in "Unnatural Selection" is legal, given what we later learn about Federation laws.

**** Unnatural Selection is basically a TOS episode translated into TNG. It's really easy to imagine McCoy in place of Pulaski, and it still works. It can probably be written off as [[Early Installment Weirdness]], due to being one of the early seasons where TNG was still floundering about trying to recreate the style and feel of TOS.

*** Given that the ship archives seem to hold ridiculous amounts of information about a wide range of things, it's not at all unreasonable that relatively detailed information about the bar (on Earth, regularly visited by Starfleet cadets and therefore a part of Starfleet culture) would be included simply [[For Science!|For One Hundred Percent Completionism]] (it wouldn't be the most obscure thing by a long shot).

*** Even in the case of the Talaxian resort Neelix programs, just because Voyager never visited it, who's to say Neelix couldn't feed the computer information about it in other ways? Could be pictures, video footage, something of the sort, from which the computer then extrapolates textures, dimensions and other program elements, which Neelix can then tweak to get details right.

** Maybe the most egregious case of this is in "Unification Part II" where Data, using an unfamiliar Romulan system, is able to whip up a fully realistic hologram of Commander Riker and two other Starfleet officers, seemingly in no time flat. The only flaw is that he doesn't get Riker's hair right! Okay, it is Data, but it stretches belief in any case.

*** Basically, "It's Data" is the explanation. Data knows Romulan, quickly figures out the system, and does it all at speed. Someone else probably could have done it if they had an hour to study the system and get everything just right, but Data can cut that down to a few minutes.

* Both biologically and culturally speaking, the Federation and more importantly the entire Milky Way is teeming with diversity. ''[[Star Trek: Voyager]]'' in particular managed to show some really bizarre races that matured backwards (that little kid is actually 96 years old and has grandkids), aged exceedingly rapidly (the Ocampa, with their 9-year lifespan, look and act ''12 years old'' by the time they're ''6 months old''), and achieved sexual maturity and started whole families by age 3 (the Breen, according to the Doctor). What must the Federation's age-of-consent laws be like, and how are they keeping some major perverts from engaging in sex tourism?

** Maybe they just define the age of consent per species? Though I'd love to know whose job it is to assign ages of consent to newly discovered species.

** One can imagine the species itself might have some laws concerning that subject. What really starts raising questions is hybrids. In ''[[Star Trek: Voyager]]'': "Before And After" for instance, Kes marries Tom Paris and has a girl named Linnis Paris. A few years later, Tom's friend Harry Kim marries Linnis and they have a son named Andrew. It's not clear how much the hybridization with humans slowed the maturity rate and increased the lifespan of the part-Ocampa children, but presumably (this being shown as having happened only a few years into the future), they still grew up amazingly fast. All the same, had this alternate timeline not been erased, Tom and Harry would each have had a lot of explaining to do when they got home.

{{quote|[Hypothetical situation]

* Even leaving that aside, just imagine what kinds of perversion must be possible using holodecks. Is ''any'' spectacularly perverted use of the holodeck illegal, and if so, how does the Federation (or the Romulan Star Empire or the Dominion or anyone else, really) enforce these laws?

** Probably nothing short of creating an actual AI to do the deed with is illegal. There would be no victims after all.

 

== I hate having women on the bridge, right female first officer? ==

* In James Tiptree Jr.'s great short story "Houston, Houston, Do You Read?" an astronaut is thrust into the distant future and is surprised by how little is known about his time. But then thinks to himself: "Who do I know of the hideous Thirty Years' War that was three centuries back for me? ''Fighting devastated Europe for two generations.'' Not even names." This is a case of the same.

* Yes, but here's the thing: You know Adolf Hitler is dead. Now, if you knew that there were probably tons of German guys named Adolf in the 1940s and you knew that the most famous one was dead, would you really immediately leap to "It's Adolf Hitler!"? Especially if it meant you might be accusing some completely innocent random German dude?

 

== Why did they invent synthehol? ==

* The only person who ever expressed distates with synthehol (aside from the Klingons) was Scotty, who was very much used to having the real deal on hand (remember, the Enterprise once greeted the Klingon Chancellor with ''Romulan Ale'' that they just 'happened' to have on board. Also, given that there is every chance of a battle or a [[Negative Space Wedgie]] at any time, its a bad idea for 1/3 of the crew (those off duty) to be blitzed. Think of it as the equivilent of NA beer given to servicemembers in combat zones: it simulates the taste and aids in morale and relaxation without the side effects that could impair mission capability.

 

[[Category:Live Action TV/Headscratchers]]

[[Category:index]]

__NOTOC__